The First Days of Man, as Narrated Quite Simply for Young Readers

by Frederic Arnold Kummer

One night, while chasing a huge bear, Ban and his hunters reached the top of some low hills, and here, having killed the bear, they made a camp and slept. In the morning, Ban, who had climbed upon a tall rock, found himself looking over a great wide valley, which sloped down and down, mile after mile, until the far side of it was lost in the morning mists. Soon the sun dried up the mists, and there, far away, was a wide strip of water, shining in the early sunlight like a river of silver. Ban called some of his companions to him, and they gazed at it a long time in silence. They knew it was water, but they did not know it was the ocean, but supposed it to be a great river.

Ban was tired of living in the hills, and wanted to find a new home where fish and game were more plentiful, so he told his companions to go back and bring up the whole tribe.

Soon they came, several hundred of them, the young men with their weapons, the old men, the women and children bringing the pottery bowls, the furs and skins, the food. They left the brush huts they had been living in, and swarmed down the slope of the hillside like so many bees. Whenever the early tribes got tired of living in one place, and decided to find another home, they moved like this, in a great swarm, just as bees do when the hive becomes overcrowded, and some must seek a new place to live in. Later on, when there were many more people on the earth, these great movements or migrations of tribes and races were made by hundreds of thousands, and even millions, wandering through the country for thousands of miles, destroying everything in their path, and finally coming to rest in a new home, and founding a new nation.

Ban and his people moved slowly toward the sea, hunting and camping as they went. At last one day they came to the seashore, and stood on the smooth white sand, gazing at the ocean in wonder. They saw no one about, and there was very little to eat, so they set out along the shore, hoping to find a better place to make a camp.

For two days they wandered along the ocean, shooting wild-fowl, catching some turtles, and killing a few seals they saw on the rocks. When they found they could not drink the ocean water, some of them wanted to go back to the hills, but Ban would not let them.

"Let us keep on," he said. "Somewhere there will be water we can drink." So they went on, slaking their thirst with the blood of the birds and animals they killed, or with rainwater they found in hollows in the rocks.

On the third day, some of Ban's men, who had been going on ahead, came back, and said that they saw smoke rising into the air, far up the beach. They thought it might come from the fires of one of the other valley tribes, on a hunting trip. Ban gave the order to hurry on.

Soon they came to a point of rocks, on which there were many seals. Far out on the point they saw some men, hunting them. Ban's people set up a great shout to these men, who stood looking at them in surprise.

Ban and some of his fighters called to the strangers, and the men on the rocks called back, but neither could understand what the others said, for in all the many years the children of Ka-Ma and Tula had lived by the sea, they had made a new language for themselves, different from the language of the people of the valley. When the hill people heard these strange words, and saw the grass-cloth clothing the sea people wore, they knew them to be strangers, and not of the valley tribe. This at once made them enemies, and they began to throw stones at them with their slings, and to shoot at them with arrows, and hurl their spears.